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2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

The FBI’s October Surprise Is Devastating for Hillary Clinton The Democratic presidential nominee is again under criminal investigation less than two weeks before the election. By David French

By on October 28th, 2016

On Friday afternoon, the FBI uncorked the mother of all October surprises, announcing in a letter to Congress that it has re-opened its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s “personal email server.” The reason? During an “unrelated investigation”* it uncovered e-mails that “appear to be pertinent” to Clinton’s case. It is seeking to determine whether the e-mails contain classified information and can’t yet determine their significance.

Stripped of the legalese, it means that Hillary is back in legal jeopardy. The FBI doesn’t investigate and recommend enforcement actions against computer servers. It holds people accountable, and Hillary is the person most responsible for her own e-mail. I have three initial thoughts.

First, these e-mails must be prima facie problematic. There is no way the FBI publicly re-opens this investigation on the eve of a presidential election if the new e-mails contained information about yoga routines or wedding plans. Moreover, the very fact that the FBI is trying to determine whether the e-mails contain classified information indicates that their content is setting off alarm bells in the Bureau. In other words, this is serious.

Second, the e-mails could have an impact on the decision whether to charge Hillary or her aides either under the Espionage Act or for obstructing the initial investigation, perhaps by lying to the FBI. Recall that Comey previously exonerated Clinton under a made-up legal standard, but if there are more e-mails — and if Clinton or her aides worked to conceal their existence from the FBI — then their conduct may even rise to the FBI’s arbitrary, higher threshold of lawlessness. At the very least, it renders the FBI’s previous decision not to prosecute even more suspect.

Third, unless the FBI announces the investigation and clears her within the span of basically one work week (an action that would be deeply problematic on its own terms), Hillary’s closing argument to the American people is going to be that Donald Trump is so dangerous that it’s worth gambling your vote on a woman under current criminal investigation.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

MY SAY: EXTREME VETTING OR VETTING EXTREMISTS?

By on October 28th, 2016

What exactly does ‘open borders” Hillary Clinton mean by “extreme vetting” of immigrants? How does one do it with thousands pouring into our nation?

Maybe she means the old 1944 Louis Jordan Chris Barber song recorded on “JI Jive”….” Is you IS or IS you Ain’t My Baby” could be broadcast loudly at all immigration centers.

It all depends on what the meaning of IS is…as her husband said.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia, Russia, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia Should Not Sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council Disgracefully, history repeats itself at the United Nations, as abusive regimes work to hide their own records. By Javier El-Hage & Roberto González

By on October 28th, 2016

Today, the United Nations General Assembly will elect 14 of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the organization’s main body tasked with protecting and promoting human rights globally. Appallingly, six notorious dictatorships — China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia — are running for reelection for a new three-year term. By gaining these highly coveted seats, which they consistently use to exercise a heckler’s veto, authoritarian regimes seek to prevent any significant exposure of their horrendous human-rights records.

The UNHRC was established in 2006 with the authority to appoint U.N. special procedures (working groups, independent experts, special rapporteurs, etc.), assess the human-rights situation among the 193 member states of the U.N. through its Universal Periodic Review, and receive individual complaints. In practice, around 22 authoritarian regimes — roughly 47 percent of its members — control the council’s agenda, using their seats to block resolutions against friendly dictatorships, disproportionately criticize Israel, paint a rosy picture of their own dictatorial records, and shut down victims of human-rights abuses.

Authoritarian regimes with a leading voice in the council include Ethiopia, Venezuela, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Burundi. Their hijacking of the council is not a recent trend. The UNHRC was created to replace the Human Rights Commission, a body established in 1946, which was disbanded after it infamously elected Muammar Qaddafi as president in 2003.

Prior to its disappearance, the commission suffered a barrage of criticism and vilification precisely because many of its members were dictatorial regimes. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general at the time, said in 2005 that “the commission’s capacity to perform its tasks” was “undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism.” In particular, Annan criticized the states that had “sought membership of the commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others,” resulting in a “credibility deficit” that cast a “shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.”

To prevent the disaster that was the Human Rights Commission from happening again, the U.N. General Assembly established a set of minimum standards that states should fulfill if they wished to join the newly created council. Its founding resolution mandated that states “take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.” The resolution also stated that the candidates “shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.”

So, given the selection criteria developed by the U.N. General Assembly itself, no country that violates human rights systematically and that is likely to use its membership to undermine the protection of human-rights victims should even be allowed to run for election.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

At the U.N., Another Obama Kowtow to the Castro Regime The U.S. abstained in the annual vote to condemn its embargo of Cuba. By Elliott Abrams

By on October 28th, 2016

Today, for the first time ever, the United States abstained in the annual United Nations General Assembly vote to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba. Needless to say, President Obama is very proud, Ben Rhodes is very proud, John Kerry is very proud, and our ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, is especially proud.

Power’s remarks to the General Assembly were a perfect rendition of the Obama approach to Cuba, which is to say they were full of apologies about the United States and falsehoods about Cuba. Let’s take a look.

First, Power said that “after 50-plus years of pursuing the path of isolation, we have chosen to take the path of engagement. Because, as President Obama said in Havana, we recognize that the future of the island lies in the hands of the Cuban people, of course.” The Obama policy has been to engage with Cuban regime, not the Cuban people — who are suffering worse repression since Obama signed his deal with Castro. In what possible sense does the future of the Cuban people, suffering under a Communist dictatorship, lie in their own hands? It quite obviously lies in the hands of the Castros, their anointed successors, and the Communist party of Cuba.

Because Obama’s policy was to give the regime all the new advantages it has gotten without demanding anything serious in exchange – without demanding human-rights improvements, for example — an observer might think that perhaps Obama just doesn’t care much about the rights of the Cuban people. No, no! Power tells us that

abstaining on this resolution does not mean that the United States agrees with all of the policies and practices of the Cuban government. We do not. We are profoundly concerned by the serious human-rights violations that the Cuban government continues to commit with impunity against its own people — including arbitrarily detaining those who criticize the government; threatening, intimidating, and, at times, physically assaulting citizens who take part in peaceful marches and meetings; and severely restricting the access that people on the island have to outside information.

We are profoundly concerned, and what are we going to do about it? Give the regime more free gifts, it seems. There is no hint in what Power said at the U.N. of any additional pressure on Cuba to stop beating and jailing dissidents. None.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama’s Sinking Ship in the Pacific He neglected relations with the Philippines, which has now pivoted towards China. By Arthur Herman

By on October 28th, 2016

The words “Obama” and “disaster” go together all too well these days. To name just a few, there’s Obama’s Middle East disaster, the Obamacare disaster, Obama’s economic disaster, and Obama’s Europe disaster, including Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the refugee crisis sweeping the continent — a crisis triggered by Obama’s Middle East disaster.

And now we have Obama’s Pacific disaster, which may have cost us America’s oldest ally in the region, the Philippines. Its president, Rodrigo Duterte, has been on an anti-American tirade since the G20 summit in early September. He’s denounced Obama to his face as a “son of a bitch” and canceled any future joint military exercises with the U.S. “America has lost,” he’s been quoted as saying, meaning we’ve lost out to the other great power in the Pacific, China. Duterte has just finished up trips to Beijing, to court Chinese president Xi Jinping, and to Japan, where Duterte said it was time for all foreign troops to leave his island nation — including the handful of planes and 200 personnel we sent to our former air base at Clark Field to monitor Chinese moves in the Pacific’s hottest hot spot, the South China Sea.

Granted, Duterte is an acknowledged nut case. Granted, too, U.S.–Philippine relations have had their ups and downs, with previous low spots including the Fernando Marcos years and President Corazon Aquino’s closure of our bases at Clark and Subic Bay in 1991. Still, Douglas MacArthur must be somersaulting in his grave. The idea that the country for whose protection and then liberation he dedicated so much of his life; the country whose soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder with ours to fight the Japanese army to a standstill on Bataan in 1942, and then hailed MacArthur as their savior when he kept his promise, “I shall return,” in 1944; the country that U.S. Special Ops troops have helped to save from al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents since 9/11 — the idea that the Philippines would abandon its treaty alliance with the United States to join up with China, a nation with which Manila has been feuding for years, would seem outrageous, even contrary to nature.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

WikiLeaks Dumps Mean Hillary’s Presidency Would Be Tainted from Day One Evidence of her corruption would aid America’s adversaries. By John Fund

By on October 28th, 2016

Critics of WikiLeaks claim its leaking of sleazy Clinton e-mails is serving the interests of Vladimir Putin, who wants Donald Trump to win the 2016 election. But, if Putin is in fact behind the WikiLeaks dumps, he may actually be making a safer bet. Should Trump lose, a weakened Hillary Clinton will take office with a big chunk of the American people viewing her as illegitimate and many others as untrustworthy in foreign affairs. That kind of geopolitical advantage could be priceless.

The latest WikiLeaks revelation is a 2011 memo from top Clinton aide Doug Band outlining conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was secretary of state. It essentially is a confession of massive charity fraud and corruption. As Politico reports: “The memo at one point refers bluntly to the money-making part of Clinton’s life as ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ and notes that in at least one case a company — global education firm Laureate International Universities — began paying Clinton personally after first being a donor to the Clinton Foundation.”

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former Clinton Treasury official and Hillary defender Steve Rattner didn’t even bother to swat back at the sleazy appearance of the revelations. He insisted nothing illegal had been done, but admitted that, if elected, Hillary faces “continuing, ongoing investigations.” Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, confirmed that yesterday: “It’s a target-rich environment. Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.”

While clear evidence of a quid pro quo between donors to the Clinton Foundation and State Department officials hasn’t surfaced yet, there are lots of warm pistols. Peter Schweizer, the author of the book Clinton Cash, wrote last August in the Wall Street Journal about large donations to the Clinton Foundation from the Kremlin-backed Stolknovo Foundation:

The (Clinton) State Department recruited and facilitated the commitment of billions of American dollars in the creation of a Russian “Silicon Valley” whose technological innovations include Russian hypersonic cruise-missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles capable of delivering airborne Russian troops.

A Russian reset, indeed.

Even if no improper favors beyond access to top State Department officials is ever shown, the WikiLeaks e-mails reveal a disturbing pattern of international solicitation fraud on the part of the Clinton Foundation. Formed as a vehicle to build a presidential library for Bill Clinton, the Foundation began work in Haiti and other countries in 2003. But it didn’t have clearance from New York authorities to operate internationally, which may explain why no official audit of its activities was conducted for several years. Even now, the Clinton Foundation has yet to fill in required lines on 990s for 1998 through 2007, aggregating their government grants.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Zineb el Rhazoui, Charlie Hebdo Survivor, Discusses Why the World Needs to ‘Destroy Islamic Fascism’ Undeterred by fatwas and death threats, the author has released an incendiary and thoughtful new book, bound to provoke debate. Emma-Kate Symons

By on October 28th, 2016

She leads a clandestine existence, on the move and under 24-hour guard as France’s most protected woman. Yet Zineb El Rhazoui, the Charlie Hebdo journalist who happened to be in Casablanca on January 7 last year, the day terrorists “avenging the Prophet” massacred nine people at the satirical magazine in Paris, believes she has a duty to defy Islamists desperate to silence her.

Shaken but undeterred by the fatwas and relentless, precise death threats issued via social media to “kill the bitch” since she helped produce the publication’s first survivors’ issue following the attack — and spoke about it in Arabic for the Arab press — the Moroccan-French writer refuses to assume an anonymous identity. Fleeing Paris or abandoning her human rights activism, and her unforgiving critiques of the religion she grew up with, are also out of the question.

“I don’t have the right to renounce my struggle, or to give up my freedom,” says the reporter and sociologist of religion in an interview with Women in the World, during a recent trip to New York, as part of French president Francois Hollande’s delegation when he received the Appeal of Conscience Foundation’s World Statesman Award for 2016. “If the French state protects me it is not little individual me: What is being protected is my freedom to be irreverent, and freedom of expression, so I should exercise this even more because I enjoy this protection.”

“It’s totally crazy. I have done nothing against the law and have nothing to hide, yet I live with security while those who threaten us are free,” El Rhazoui declares with an air of shock and anger that underscores the arbitrariness and brutality visited on a 34-year-old woman condemned to living on the run and mostly in the shadows. “And if you call them by their names you are Islamophobic and racist. I am racist? I can teach them a few things about Arab culture. I can show them how to discover its richness and the diversity of their culture. I believe this culture deserves universality because you can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Social Justice vs. Truth A look at the university’s new mission. Jack Kerwick

By on October 28th, 2016

Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, argued in a recently published essay that while its traditional “telos” (end or goal) has been truth, within the last few decades the university has assumed another: Social Justice.

The university, however, can only have one telos.

The conflict between these two goals has raged for decades, Haidt claims. Last year, though, it became unmanageable when student groups at 86 universities and colleges around the country issued “demands” to administrators, demands for Social Justice that, by and large, were met.

The following statement is posted at BlackLiberationCollective.org:

“We demand at the minimum, Black students and Black faculty to be reflected by the national percentage of Black folk in the state and the country.

We demand free intuition for Black and indigenous students.

We demand a divestment from prisons and an investment in communities.”

A statement of “principles” follows. The Black Liberation Collective (BLC) opposes “anti-Blackness;” “sexism;” “ableism;” “capitalism;” “White privilege;” “inequality;” and “heteronormativity.” It rejects as well non-violence considered as a principle in contradistinction to a tactic.

“Anti-Black racism is woven in the fabric of our global society,” says the BLC. “When social systems are racialized by white supremacy, whiteness becomes the default of humanity and Blackness is stripped of its humanity, becoming a commodity, becoming disposable.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Bank Fines Elect Democrats An eyebrow-raising new study from a nonpartisan research institute. Matthew Vadum

By on October 28th, 2016

The Obama administration is using billions of dollars in banking fines to fund radical left-wing activist groups that work to elect Democrats, according to an eye-opening new study from a nonpartisan research institute.

During Eric Holder’s term as attorney general from February 2009 through April 2015, a little under $37.3 billion was paid by U.S. banks under the threat of federal lawsuits. All but $720 million of that sum came from three big settlements: Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase.

Many of the cases rest on bogus “disparate impact theory” which left-wing government lawyers use to make sure that “banks become liable for charges of racism based upon the perceived injustice of lending disparity in certain lower income areas, regardless of the reasons for the disparity.”

Instead of being used to help the supposed victims of these banks, the money flows to leftist allies of President Obama.

Adding insult to injury, the process by which the money snakes its way to left-wing organizations is both corrupt and unconstitutional, according to the report from the Government Accountability Institute that is called “Follow the Money: How the Department of Justice Funds Progressive Activists.” (Bestselling Clinton Cash author and anti-corruption crusader Peter Schweizer is GAI’s president. The full 115-page report is available in PDF form here.)

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Checkmating Obama The president has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel. October 28, 2016 Caroline Glick

By on October 28th, 2016

In one of the immortal lines of Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Lobbying the administration is pointless. Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

Before turning to what Israel must do, first we need to understand what Israel can do.

A good place to begin is by considering what just transpired at UNESCO, where twice in a week, UNESCO bodies resolved to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The fight that Israel waged at UNESCO is not the fight it needs to wage at the Security Council. The stakes at the Security Council are far higher.

Like the UN General Assembly, UNESCO’s decisions are non-binding declarations that have no legal or operational significance. As such, there is no reason to expend great resources to fight them. For Israel, the goal of the fight at UNESCO is not to defeat anti-Israel initiatives. That is impossible given the Palestinians’ automatic majority.

The purpose of the fight at UNESCO is to humiliate European governments that side with antisemitic initiatives, and to weaken the congenitally anti-Israel body itself.

The government achieved both of these objectives. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s disavowal of his own government’s abstention from the vote on the first resolution – like the similar position taken after the fact by the Mexican government – was a diplomatic victory for Israel.

So too, the fact that UNESCO’s own Secretary-General Irina Bukova felt compelled to disavow her own agency’s actions by rejecting the resolution’s denial of the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem was a significant victory for Israel. Her statement was deeply damaging for UNESCO and its reputation.

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